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Economic Impact of Scotland’s Renewable Energy Sector

Central to any strategy in mitigating climate changes is the use of renewable energy sources. However, renewable energy is also being increasingly recognised as an opportunity for economic development.

This report quantifies the contribution of renewable activities to employment, output, and gross value added in Scotland. This includes employment and activity in Scotland that are supported directly and through spill-over impacts by Scotland’s renewable energy sector.

We find that Scotland’s renewable activities support £5.2bn of output, £2.3bn of GVA and 22,660 full-time equivalent employment in the Scottish economy.

A significant amount of the FTE employment was supported by onshore wind (8,780), offshore wind (4,700), hydropower (3,290), bioenergy (2,630) and renewable heat (2,390).

 

Authors

James is a Fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute. He specialises in economic policy, modelling, trade and climate change. His work includes the production of economic statistics to improve our understanding of the economy, economic modelling and analysis to enhance the use of these statistics for policymaking, data visualisation to communicate results impactfully, and economic policy to understand how data can be used to drive decisions in Government.